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If you go and study the actual history of fishing territories, it invariably turns out that they all came/come with complex systems for managing yields. There w

If you go and study the actual history of fishing territories, it invariably turns out that they all came/come with complex systems for managing yields. There wasn't ever "a big sea full of fish and anyone could just do whatever they want". For example, if you catch fish with impunity because there is nobody at sea to stop you, you still need to sell them which means interacting the people (in some way) close to where you caught them, and markets have traditionally been one of the points of control. When so-called tragedies of the commons occur, it is invariably because someone has first attacked those systems of control to further their own ends. In the case of fishing, most traditional fishing communities and systems have objected to the arrival of industrial scale fishing, but they have been ignored and sidelined because of the interests of the owners of those new systems. So the problem is not that people/communities cannot manage resources held in common, it is that they cannot effectively resist power, wealth and greed if and when it arrives. But that very inability is also contingent on broader political and economic conditions, and is not inherent to the fact that the resources are held in common. Climate change may well be the first true example of Hardin's original concept of "tragedy of the commons". It has a number of properties that traditional resource "extraction" behaviors do not share (including the invisibility of the problem until it is too late). But when people talk about "tragedy of the commons", they are typically referring to much smaller scale situations than the one(s) that have led us to where we are with climate change. There's also a case to be made, given the remarkably early understanding of the consequences of fossil fuel utilization and the documented behavior of the companies involved, that climate change is precisely the type of failure I'm describing rather than the one Hardin did. We have systems of control for the things fossil fuel has negatively impacted, but people who became very, very, very, very rich from their use actively subverted and captured them for their own purposes. I acknowledge that the shift is subtle: from the problem being "humans cannot manage resources held in common" to "human systems for managing resources held in common are frequently not robust enough to withstand selfishness and greed". Nevertheless, I think it is an important one.

crazygringo 2y ago
I guess I don't understand your motive in what you call a "subtle shift" of trying to redefine away the concept of the tragedy of the commons. You say 'There wasn't ever "a big sea full of fish and anyone could just do whatever they want".' But to the contrary, that's basically always been the case. Fishing boats were limited by technology and the size of their local markets, but once those limitations disappeared because of inevitable technological progress, then that's exactly what happened. And we see this happening especially with Chinese overfishing today. You're claiming that supposed "systems of control" existed in the first place and then were attacked, but that seems entirely counterfactual to me. There was no system of control for a problem that technological progress hadn't created yet -- humans don't see that far enough into the future. And if four countries that border a sea want to limit fishing but a fifth one says I'm going to overfish as much as I want, well then what do you think is going to happen? I don't see what benefit there is in attacking the concept of tragedy of the commons. It's not some kind of fatalistic viewpoint of what must happen (which you seem to be claiming -- "that people/communities cannot manage resources held in common"), but rather a warning of what will happen when resources aren't properly managed. Claiming the tragedy doesn't exist seems like it would only benefit the people who want to to exploit our shared resources. By recognizing its validity, we can do our best to create and improve systems of management (especially international systems) to prevent the tragedies from occurring.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  Your take on "toc" is a relatively new one. When Hardin first wrote about it, the message was (and was for some decades after it) that holding resources in common is doomed to failure and that is why private ownership/control of them is a good idea. Even with your view, there's a subtle shift involved in talking about it as an issue of whether or not resources are properly managed or not, because the question is, quite directly, what is the best way of ensuring that this happens? TOC has been routinely used over the last half-century of so to justify the answer to that being "privately owned", and reasonably given the name Hardin came up with: it's a tragedy of the commons, implicitly not affecting privately held resources. > And if four countries that border a sea want to limit fishing but a fifth one says I'm going to overfish as much as I want, well then what do you think is going to happen It depends a lot on scale. If country #5 plans to sell the fish to countries #1-4, it won't work (or at least, it may not work). If country #5 plans to eat all the fish it catches and has no effective internal population that will be able to gain control over its fishing behavior, then ... tragedy. But notice the key point here: it's not as if country #5 is ignorant about the situation. Countries #1-4 will be quite belligerent in their objections to #5's behavior. So the problem here is not that "people just blindly take from a commonly held resource and destroy it". It's the people (in this case, country #5) willfully ignore the social structures in place to protect the fish in order to pursue their own greed and selfishness.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    > Your take on "toc" is a relatively new one. I don't think so. I'm just regurgitating what I learned in political science classes decades ago, and what the mainstream understanding still is today in the general media. And what you're omitting is that while yes, the solution from the point of view of the political right is privatization, the solution from the point of view of the political left has always been more active government management/regulation, international treaties, etc. You seem to be ignoring the entire history of solutions on the left, and treating the problem as if it's solely an invention of the right. I don't know why. And with the fishing example, I never suggested country #5 was ignorant, or that countries #1-4 wouldn't object. I never used the word "blindly". But you're claiming that people in country #5 are "willfully ignoring the social structures in place" and that's false. There are no structures and never were. (Again, see: Chinese overfishing.) And you're admitting "then... tragedy" in my very example. So I still don't understand why you're claiming ToC doesn't exist, except that you think it's a justification for privatization. But you're ignoring it's also a justification for regulation and cooperation. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater?

crazygringo 2y ago

I guess I don't understand your motive in what you call a "subtle shift" of trying to redefine away the concept of the tragedy of the commons. You say 'There wasn't ever "a big sea full of fish and anyone could just do whatever they want".' But to the contrary, that's basically always been the case. Fishing boats were limited by technology and the size of their local markets, but once those limitations disappeared because of inevitable technological progress, then that's exactly what happened. And we see this happening especially with Chinese overfishing today. You're claiming that supposed "systems of control" existed in the first place and then were attacked, but that seems entirely counterfactual to me. There was no system of control for a problem that technological progress hadn't created yet -- humans don't see that far enough into the future. And if four countries that border a sea want to limit fishing but a fifth one says I'm going to overfish as much as I want, well then what do you think is going to happen? I don't see what benefit there is in attacking the concept of tragedy of the commons. It's not some kind of fatalistic viewpoint of what must happen (which you seem to be claiming -- "that people/communities cannot manage resources held in common"), but rather a warning of what will happen when resources aren't properly managed. Claiming the tragedy doesn't exist seems like it would only benefit the people who want to to exploit our shared resources. By recognizing its validity, we can do our best to create and improve systems of management (especially international systems) to prevent the tragedies from occurring.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
Your take on "toc" is a relatively new one. When Hardin first wrote about it, the message was (and was for some decades after it) that holding resources in common is doomed to failure and that is why private ownership/control of them is a good idea. Even with your view, there's a subtle shift involved in talking about it as an issue of whether or not resources are properly managed or not, because the question is, quite directly, what is the best way of ensuring that this happens? TOC has been routinely used over the last half-century of so to justify the answer to that being "privately owned", and reasonably given the name Hardin came up with: it's a tragedy of the commons, implicitly not affecting privately held resources. > And if four countries that border a sea want to limit fishing but a fifth one says I'm going to overfish as much as I want, well then what do you think is going to happen It depends a lot on scale. If country #5 plans to sell the fish to countries #1-4, it won't work (or at least, it may not work). If country #5 plans to eat all the fish it catches and has no effective internal population that will be able to gain control over its fishing behavior, then ... tragedy. But notice the key point here: it's not as if country #5 is ignorant about the situation. Countries #1-4 will be quite belligerent in their objections to #5's behavior. So the problem here is not that "people just blindly take from a commonly held resource and destroy it". It's the people (in this case, country #5) willfully ignore the social structures in place to protect the fish in order to pursue their own greed and selfishness.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  > Your take on "toc" is a relatively new one. I don't think so. I'm just regurgitating what I learned in political science classes decades ago, and what the mainstream understanding still is today in the general media. And what you're omitting is that while yes, the solution from the point of view of the political right is privatization, the solution from the point of view of the political left has always been more active government management/regulation, international treaties, etc. You seem to be ignoring the entire history of solutions on the left, and treating the problem as if it's solely an invention of the right. I don't know why. And with the fishing example, I never suggested country #5 was ignorant, or that countries #1-4 wouldn't object. I never used the word "blindly". But you're claiming that people in country #5 are "willfully ignoring the social structures in place" and that's false. There are no structures and never were. (Again, see: Chinese overfishing.) And you're admitting "then... tragedy" in my very example. So I still don't understand why you're claiming ToC doesn't exist, except that you think it's a justification for privatization. But you're ignoring it's also a justification for regulation and cooperation. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater?